You do not need the cinema culture of a specialist to know that The Seven Samurai, a film made by Akira Kurosawa in 1954, is part of the world cultural heritage and has been acclaimed throughout the world as a masterpiece. Beyond the action film plot ( seven samurai hired by villagers get the better of bandits who pillage the rice crops), the film-maker’s purpose is to examine closely how seven individualistic warriors are going to develop affinities that will make them stronger than the attackers.

When Dominique Corby flies for Japan in the mid-90s, he is going there for a brief replacement at the Tour d’Argent in Tokyo. Twelve years later, he is the executive chef of the French restaurant of the New Otani Hotel in Osaka, Sakura, ( Osaka is the Japanese equivalent of Lyons in France in terms of cuisine). Since then he has never left Japan and its ancestral culture with which he feels in perfect harmony. His Japanese is so fluent when he addresses his team, that you wonder whether he can still speak French.

For the twentieth anniversary of the hotel, Dominique Kurosawa, who regularly invites starred French chefs to come and cook on his territory, dreams of a culinary version of the cult film. He invites five of his chef friends, all double-starred in the Michelin guide book ( Stéphane Carrade "Chez Rufet" from Jurançon in Pyrénées Atlantiques, Patrick Gauthier "La Madeleine" from Sens in Yonne , Gilles Goujon « meilleur ouvrier de France » from "L'Auberge du Vieux Puits" from Fontconjouse in Aude , Patrick Jeffroy from Carantec in Finistère , Jean-Paul Jeunet from Arbois in Jura) and Lionel Leconte, Bernard Loiseau’s former wine waiter in Saulieu, to make up a team of samurai representing the tradition of French cuisine for the time of four exceptional meals.

The 7 samurai on the flight back home from Japan

At the Lido (in Paris)

Little celebration at the Lido, with a couple of, well, not unfriendly ostriches !!!